Spring & Summer Science

As the academic year winds to a close, scientists’ thoughts turn towards all of the warm-weather travel ahead (in order to avoid thinking about exam marking). Mostly, that means attending scientific conferences, like the upcoming IAU Symposium, Statistical Challenges in 21st Century Cosmology in Lisbon next month, and (for me and my collaborators) the usual series of meetings to prepare for the 2014 release of Planck data. But there are also opportunities for us to interact with people outside of our technical fields: public lectures and festivals.

Next month, parallel to the famous Hay Festival of Literature & the Arts, the town of Hay-on-Wye also hosts How The Light Gets In, concentrating on the also-important disciplines of philosophy and music, with a strong strand of science thrown in. This year, along with comic book writer Warren Ellis, cringe-inducing politicians like Michael Howard and George Galloway, ubiquitous semi-intellectuals like Joan Bakewell, there will be quite a few scientists, with a skew towards the crowd-friendly and controversial. I’m not sure that I want to hear Rupert Sheldrake talk about the efficacy of science and the scientific method, although it might be interesting to hear Julian Barbour, Huw Price, and Lee Smolin talk about the arrow of time. Some of the descriptions are inscrutable enough to pique my interest: Nancy Cartwright and George Ellis will discuss “Ultimate Proof” — I can’t quite figure out if that means physics or epistemology. Perhaps similarly, chemist Peter Atkins will ask “Can science explain all of existence” (and apparently answer in the affirmative). Closer to my own wheelhouse, Roger Penrose, Laura Mersini-Houghton, and John Ellis will discuss whether it is “just possible the Big Bang will turn out to be a mistake”. Penrose was and is one of the smartest people to work out the consequences of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, though in the last few years his cosmological musings have proven to be, well, just plain wrong — but, as I said, controversial and crowd-pleasing… (Disclosure: someone from the festival called me up and asked me to write about it here.)

Alas, I’ll likely be in Lisbon, instead of Hay. But if you want to hear me speak, you can make your way up North to Grantham, where Isaac Newton was educated, for this year’s Gravity Fields festival in late September. The line-up isn’t set yet, but I’ll be there, as will my fellow astronomers Chris Lintott and Catherine Heymans and particle physicist Val Gibson, alongside musicians, dancers, and lots of opportunities to explore the wilds of Lincolnshire. Or if you want to see me before then (and prefer to stay in London), you can come to Imperial for my much-delayed Inaugural Professorial Lecture on May 21, details TBC…